Advancement Courses’ Favorite ESL Grammar Lessons

English language learners (ELLs) are estimated to constitute 25% of the student population by 2025, making ELLs the fastest-growing student population in our schools. Despite this explosive growth, many schools are not prepared. In 2016, there were 4.6 million ELL students in U.S. schools, but only 78,000 teachers dedicated to teaching English as a second language (ESL). That’s why it’s more important than ever for all teachers to be prepared to support these students in the classroom.

In this article, we’ve collected some of our favorite ESL grammar lessons to help educators at all levels teach essential vocabulary and language skills.

Elementary ESL Grammar Lessons

Because English vocabulary terms and word endings don’t always follow a pattern, ELL students might need some practice with things like how to handle adjectives and how to discuss common topics like food. The exercises below will give them the practice and vocabulary they need.

• Adjective Opposites: This lesson helps ELLs learn opposites (e.g., big and small, beautiful and ugly). It includes two activities: a game students can play with a partner and an exercise for individual practice.
• Food Vocabulary: This article gives several lists of vocabulary words about food, including types of food, adjectives to describe taste, and terms related to cooking and shopping. You can add to these lists with your students and use them to help students talk about their favorite foods, follow recipes, and create shopping lists.
• Adjective Sentence Completion Guessing Game: This worksheet helps students practice choosing the correct adjective, including knowing the meaning of the word and the correct word ending.

Intermediate ESL Grammar Lessons

Students with some basic ESL skills under their belts will be able to tackle finer points of the language like different forms of nouns and adjectives and different verb tenses. Here are some activities you can share with students to help them refine their skills.

• Countable and Uncountable Nouns: This detailed lesson covers several difficult issues such as when to use articles (a, an, the), how to make nouns plural depending on their ending, and other issues that are obvious to a native speaker’s ear but hard to explain to ELLs.
• Comparative and Superlative Forms: This lesson uses a combination of instruction and group exercises to teach students how to construct comparative and superlative forms of adjectives.
• How Questions: Tense Review: Asking others how things are going is an essential conversation skill. This activity, designed for individuals or partners, helps students practice verb constructions for “how” questions.

Advanced ESL Grammar Lessons

Students who are more proficient at English will be ready for more abstract concepts such as word formation and discussing intangible things like feelings. Check out the lessons below for ideas to engage your advanced ESL students.

• Academic Vocabulary With More Than One Meaning: This lesson helps students learn about words with more than one meaning. It includes activities such as a game for partners, flash cards, instructional reading, and an essay prompt.
• Advanced Word Formation: The difference between “baker” and “baked” may be obvious to native English speakers but can be confusing to those not as familiar with word formations. This detailed chart helps students see the difference between nouns, adjectives, and verbs that use the same base word.
• Language of Feelings: You can do this exercise as a group or in pairs. First, one person makes expressions or lists words associated with a certain emotion, and the others have to guess the emotion. Then you go through a list of emotions and students must offer words, gestures, or sounds associated with each emotion.

More Strategies for Teaching ELLs in Your Classroom

Our country has always been a melting pot, and the growth of our ELL population only adds to the richness of our diversity. Teaching English language skills will be one of the greatest gifts you can give your ELL students, to help them more easily share their thoughts and talents with others.

For more ideas and tools to help the ELLs in your classroom, check out these classes from Advancement Courses:

• A Practical Guide for Supporting English Language Learners: Help your ELLs acquire essential language skills and assimilate to a new learning environment—without disrupting classroom time or adding to your already-taxed schedule.
• Game-Based Strategies for Language Instruction: Gamify your language classroom! In this course, you’ll learn about the theories behind gamification and create games that will help your students learn crucial language skills—and have fun doing it!
• College Readiness for English Language Learners: Develop instructional techniques to enhance ELL students’ ability to read critically, discuss effectively, and cohesively present ideas in writing as they prepare for college.
• Teaching Reading to English Language Learners: ELLs’ reading skills can vary as widely as native English-speaking students. This course explores instructional practices, lesson structures, classroom conditions, and family engagement strategies so teachers can push students toward greater understanding and more meaningful engagement of texts.
• Teaching Writing to English Language Learners: Examine classroom conditions and best practices for teaching writing to ELLs. In this course, you will learn how to teach students at all levels of language acquisition how to make connections, ask questions, synthesize, and continue learning independently through mentor texts and authors.
• Strategies for Teaching Multicultural Students: This course gives you the tools you need to start closing the achievement gap for multicultural students. You’ll learn how to engage students and their families from a political, cultural, socioeconomic, language, and psychological perspective.

In addition to these, Advancement Courses offers K–12 educators more than 240 online, self-paced professional development courses covering both foundational topics and emerging trends. All courses are offered for both graduate and continuing education credit for your salary advancement or recertification needs.